Sad Janet

by Lucie Britsch

  I put on one of the Christmas CDs and dance with the dog. I somehow manage not to trip and kill it, though if I did at least he’d be with his mistress. Poor, sad Vyla, who thought a dog could save her. I have a bunch and they haven’t yet.

  I put on another dress over the dress I’m already wearing, over my own clothes, and I say to the dog, Could I be wearing any more clothes?, but the dog doesn’t get it, and I don’t want to live in a world where I have to explain Friends, even to dogs. Don’t tell Debs I watch Friends, I tell the dog, or I’ll never hear the end of it.

  It’s okay, Janet, the dog says.

  But it’s not, I say. It’s not okay. None of it.

  The first Janet is dead, and I’m falling again, only this time a chair catches me. The dog jumps up on my lap. I’m his mistress now, and he doesn’t need to know I almost tripped and killed him. Or that I made up all that stuff about his mum. Vyla wasn’t his mum, I know that. This wasn’t her apartment. His mum was just some dead girl with better shit than me.

  * * *

  Next thing I know, Debs is standing over me, shaking my shoulder.

  What the fuck, Janet?

  I can feel her lifting me up and putting me in her car.

  I knew you were screwing the cop, I mumble into the seat.

  I thought you thought I was screwing the cat lady, she spits. Which is it, Janet?

  Debs had no problem getting the dog to leave the apartment. Now he’s sitting on the other side of the car, pretending he doesn’t know me. Everyone does what Debs tells them. She’s the boss of everyone. Of course, the dog probably would have followed me if I’d even tried to leave, instead of staying there forever, playing dress-up, playing Psycho, only with me playing all the characters in one weird, sad mashup where everyone is running away, where I am both the killer and the victim.

  26

  I wake up on Debs’s couch with a dead arm. I’ve yet to figure out how to sleep without waking up with a lifeless limb. It’s like our bodies don’t want us to ever forget them.

  I expect one of her kids to be sitting on top of me watching cartoons, or kneeling in front of me, their little face smooshed right up to me, ready to ask me if I’m alive, to which I don’t know the answer. When they were small, they were always going through my coat or my bag, pulling out tampons, asking me why everything was, and it was too much, like if I knew, why would I be here? Wouldn’t I have transcended? Or at least have my shit together? I know this is what kids do, but for a while I thought they were sent here to test me. Just ignore them, Debs always says. She ignores her kids, and they love her more for it.

  Today, though, the house is quiet. The kids are all gone. I can’t even hear any barking.

  I want to go back to sleep, but I need water. Several cats have died in my mouth somewhere between leaving the girl’s apartment and now.

  I stumble to the kitchen. Hello? I call out. Nothing.

  I can see down to the kennels from the kitchen window, and there’s nothing unusual other than it’s very quiet and there’s a stillness that I’m not used to. The crappy old doors that usually rattle in the wind are silent. Even the roofs that usually drip aren’t dripping.

  Maybe I’m dead, I think for a second, but my arm is still a bit dead, so the rest of me must still be alive. I’m the right amount of dead.

  Where the fuck is everyone? I say to no one. I look at the clock on the wall. It’s eight thirty. Melissa will be here soon. For once I might be glad to see her, assuming we’re not the last humans on earth, which I’m not so sure about. I’ll have to try extra hard not to murder Melissa if we are. Then again, if I can’t help it, who would know or care?

  I call Debs, but it goes to voicemail. I don’t leave a message because I know it will piss her off.

  Melissa pulls up and waves. I watch her walk down to the kennels to start her day. The first gate creaks, like it’s supposed to, to let the dogs know someone is coming. The barking starts up, and it won’t let up till we close for the night. It’s better than the silence I woke up to, though, and the one that threatens us all, the one that comes with giving up on yourself, the one that drops you into someone else’s abandoned house, a place that’s mostly ghosts and dust.

  I take Melissa’s lead and start my day. When I get to the office, there’s a note pinned to the door. On the front it says, JANET. Hi, I think. That’s me. I exist.

  I open it.

  Janet, it says, I’ll be gone awhile. Look after the place till I get back—Debs.

  That’s it.

  I am so mad. Not that she’s dumped this on me, not that she didn’t say where she has gone or why, not even that she didn’t say for how long. What is awhile? An hour? A month? A lifetime? I’m mad because I didn’t see this coming. Because I was so in my own head that I didn’t think about hers, which is always the way in relationships with humans.

  I am mad because people change, and they forget to tell each other.

  It must be because of last night, I tell myself. Finding me like that, having to clean up my mess—it must have pushed her over the edge.

  I’m sure it wasn’t really just me. For all I know, Debs had a genuine emergency. But I get the feeling she just had to leave, and she knew that I, of all people, would understand.

  I don’t know what to tell Melissa. She’ll ask so many questions I can’t answer. I’ll have to be firm with her. Tell her she has to listen to me, because I’m Debs now. She’ll just ask, Then who am I now?, and, Where’s Janet gone?, and I won’t know what to say.

  In the end I say, It’s just us now, kiddo. Even though we’re the same age.

  Sometimes people have just had enough—of other people, yes, but also of themselves. We all spend our lives pushing and pulling in a million directions, until we’re too tired to push another inch. Whatever’s left is the life we all share. A new life of sorts, but built on the ruins of the old one. It’s change, at least, and sometimes that’s enough.

  I’m not sure it’s quite enough for me, though. Not yet, anyway.

  27

  For a solid week, I do my best impression of Debs. It’s the hardest, longest week of my life. I move into her house, because someone always has to be there, and that someone is me now. I barely sleep, because when it’s noisy I worry that something’s wrong and when it’s quiet I worry that something’s wrong. It’s like having a newborn. I’m convinced that everything I do is wrong, that I’ve missed something, that I’m not doing enough. Debs has made a terrible mistake in thinking I could do this. Maybe she knew I couldn’t but didn’t care. We always think people care, but sometimes they really can’t anymore.

  I’m too tired to miss Debs. Too tired to be mad at Melissa. Too tired to worry about whether I’m happy or sad.

  * * *

  On the seventh night, the cop shows up. I thought he might. He’s looking for Debs.

  I’m the right amount of hostile you should be when talking to a cop.

  I don’t ask him in. I’m a young woman alone in the woods. Anything could happen. Including, I could suddenly get horny and complicate things even further, as I tend to do.

  He says he just wanted to know how the dog was.

  Fine, I tell him, considering.

  I ask him what her name was—the girl who died, I mean.

  Louise something, he says, and he looks on his phone, like that’s where he keeps his list of all the dead girls. Louise Chapman, he says.

  Not Vyla? I ask, just to make sure I was definitely having a breakdown.

  Nope, Louise Chapman, he says, looking confused, like there’s another dead girl he should know about. Why? he asks.

  And I can’t tell him what happened, how I drank a dead girl’s vodka and decided she was the first Janet. No reason, I finally say.

  As he’s turning around to leave, though, I stop him.

  How did she die? I ask. So I can
tell her dog, if he asks. Dogs need closure too.

  She slipped in the tub, he says.

  Not drugs, then?

  Nope, just your regular slipping in the tub. So, you be careful now, he says. And I know he’s picturing me in the tub, and I want to tell him I only take showers, but I don’t want to encourage him.

  I say good night and fake-tip my fake hat at him. He looks at me like, You’re a strange one, and I am, but I know he’s still thinking about me in the bath.

  I watch him drive off, and I realize I’m losing my mind a little. I always thought I might, but not like this.

  * * *

  About an hour later, Debs’s brother shows up. Seriously? I think. Maybe I’m in heat and they can smell it, but inside I’m the coldest I’ve ever felt.

  You’re my second gentleman caller of the night, I joke.

  Really? he says, lighting a cigarette.

  She’s not here, I say, Debs. I don’t say I’m here alone; for all he knows, the kids are here with me.

  I cross my arms so he knows I might bite.

  He laughs at me then. You’re not that fuckable, Janet, he says, and leaves.

  I am, actually! I want to say, but I don’t even understand what I’m trying to say.

  It’s almost impossible to be a woman. All I really want to be is a person anyway.

  * * *

  I don’t drink that night or sleep. If madness is coming for me, I want to be ready. Instead I sit out on the porch all night like a hillbilly, but with a Twix instead of a gun.

  I nod off for an hour and dream that Emma tells me she’s never coming home and I wake up crying. I try to call her, but she doesn’t answer. No one ever does when I need them.

  I watch the sun come up, thinking it’ll make me feel better, knowing I can count on something. But it’s not as pretty as people make it out to be. It’s just the sun doing what it does. It’s trapped like the rest of us, tethered to something it doesn’t understand.

  I go down to the kennels. The dogs aren’t expecting anyone this early, so they’re all half asleep. I’m not anyone to bark about. I’m just funny old Janet. The lady with the kibble.

  My phone goes off. It’s my mother, like she knows I’m up to something.

  Did you know he has a new girlfriend and they’re having a baby? she says.

  She doesn’t say who. She doesn’t have to.

  I hang up on her.

  I’m not surprised. It’s a thing. You split up with someone, and straightaway they meet someone else, and suddenly they’re getting married and having babies and their smug faces are all over Facebook. You can’t help but feel bad for them, that they need to do all that, because they’re afraid of the sadness.

  He must have been seeing her already when he came back to see me. He hadn’t wanted me back, he’d wanted closure. At least I gave him that.

  I’m not sad because I wanted it to be me, I’m sad because I’m glad it’s not. I should feel free, but instead I feel like my brain is collapsing. I feel like I need to do something dramatic, to stop me from doing something stupid to myself. I want to do what men do all the time—externalize my feelings, instead of internalizing them and making myself sicker.

  Before I do, I think about Melissa. About what it would do to her.

  I imagine Melissa pulling up. Melissa getting out of her car. Melissa walking down to the kennels and seeing the gate open. I imagine her cursing me, shouting my name. I picture her on her knees weeping, saying, What have you done, Janet?

  But really, I know she’s stronger than that. In a crisis you see people’s true character, and this whole week Melissa has been great. She can handle whatever I throw her.

  So I unlatch the kennel gate, get in the car, and drive away.

  * * *

  Afterward, I feel no desire to go back to my apartment. I need to keep moving forward.

  I drive to the next town over and sit outside different cafés, but I don’t go in.

  I drive to my parents’ house and sit outside for an hour. I think I see my mother come to the window, but she doesn’t come out. When she doesn’t text Janet, are you stalking us?, I figure she doesn’t know I’m there.

  So I go to a shitty motel. Just for one night, I tell myself. I need some neutral territory. I’ll take it one night at a time, I tell myself. The motel is very murdery, and it helps keep my mind off things.

  I turn on the TV. The usual January ads: gym memberships, furniture, beer.

  Then comes the news. The so-called Christmas pill has proven a huge success, the shiny host says. That’s right, Alex, people are already counting the days till November! her cohost agrees.

  That’s my pill! I want to say. But I never took it, so how could it be mine? The day we were supposed to start taking them, I opened the bottle, shook one out into my hand, and I thought about it. I poked at it, even nudged it a bit with my nose. But I couldn’t do it.

  I’ll go to the meetings, I said to myself. I’ll convince them all I’m doing it. I will be doing it, just in my own way. So I sat in that room with those people for seven weeks, and to be honest, they seemed as sad to me by the end as they had on day one.

  The news cuts to a commercial, and it’s an ad for the pill, which seems a little on-the-nose if you ask me. More people than ever had a happy Christmas, thanks to this groundbreaking new drug! The holidays are closer than you think—ask your doctor today! They even mention an all-new formula, an add-on for people who are already on other drugs. My mother would love it.

  I wonder if all those people in the meeting really were happier, or if they just liked having someone acknowledge they were sad. The same way I wonder if none of them really took the pills either, if they just went along like I did, because they didn’t want to let anyone down.

  And so it all begins again, with a new batch of guinea pigs, and it’s likely to continue until everyone is medicated. New Janets everywhere will find out that their families have put them forward as the perfect candidate. I just hope at least some of them will realize they don’t have to if they don’t want to.

  This is a lot of feelings for a filthy motel room.

  Someone in the next room is having sex, but they might be alone.

  I fall asleep looking at grad programs on my phone. Ones that are far away, and more money than I could ever afford, but I can look at them, and it’s something.

  28

  I wake up to my phone going off. It’s Debs. I don’t answer.

  What did you do? Janet? she texts me. I don’t answer.

  Tell me where you are, she writes, I’m coming.

  She knows I’m not okay, because who would do something like that and be okay?

  I tell her where I am.

  Twenty minutes later, she rolls up with a six-pack of beer.

  You have to talk to me, Janet, she says, sitting on the bed.

  So I talk to her. I tell her everything. About how tired I am of trying to be okay—not even happy, just okay—when I’m not. About how I never took the pills. She says she guessed it, because I was still the same pain in the ass as always.

  I tell her about how I thought the dead girl was Vyla, the first Janet. She says she’s sorry she didn’t go to get that dog herself, but that I’ll always be her first Janet.

  She doesn’t say anything about the dogs, but I’m too worried to ask.

  Everyone leaves me, I tell her. Physically or mentally. I haven’t got anyone in my life who can give me everything I need.

  No one does, she says.

  She says she’s sorry she left, but her ex-husband was in a car accident. She says she hates him but she loves him, you know? And I do know.

  I tell her I thought he was buried under the floorboards somewhere. That would have been easier, she says.

  Then she says, Janet, what do you need? And she’s not the one who sho
uld be asking, but at least someone is asking, and now I’m crying.

  I need to have had a different mother, I tell her, which is the truth but not fair.

  What about your dad? she says.

  He’s never really been there either, I tell her.

  And she’s quiet then. I think she’s going to lecture me about how some people don’t have parents but she doesn’t. Instead, she just says, I’m here, Janet, and I let her hug me. I’ve never seen Debs hug anyone, but she must, I realize—she has kids, great kids. I guess she just does the important stuff privately.

  Debs? I ask. What about the dogs?

  It was pretty funny, actually, she says. When she got there, she almost lost it, but then she heard a bark and looked around and realized they were all there, out in the woods, leaping around and chasing one another. The kids all piled out of the car and helped round them up, like it was a big game. It was the most excitement any of us had had in ages, she says, the dogs, the humans. You missed a real treat, she says. It was like fucking Christmas.

  Sorry, I say.

  No one got hurt, she says. Turns out all our dogs are good dogs after all. It’s just the humans who are assholes.

  And Melissa? I ask.

  Melissa’s confused, she says. But she’ll get over it.

  I do have to fire you now, though, she says. I say I understand.

  I shyly tell her I’ve been thinking about some grad programs.

  That sounds great, she says. You were always too smart for us.

  It might be, I say.

  She says, I have my kids and my own shit, but you’ve got me.

  No one has ever said that to me before. I thought no one wanted me—the way I am, anyway.

  Just stop being such a pain in the ass, she says, spoiling it all. But I forgive her.

  The way I look at it is, you have a purpose now, she says, handing me another beer.